Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman Tangent #654

I might have to depend on my self-discipline, like an adult? I might have to resign myself to accepting that my feelings are nobody else's problem? The horror.

If Anna had an argument, she would make it.

He's also been accused of domestic abuse at least twice since his trial.

Helluva coincidence, ain't it?

Hell of an irrelevancy is what it is. An extension of "convict him for being unlikable" is what it is.

Bizarrely, yes.

God knows why bc they are nothing but antagonistic towards one another here. Not saying romance is all sunshine and rainbows but they have no values in common.

At least he and Mrs A both liked weed and boobs.

I'm saying it blows that whole narrative that he was some innocent lamb outta the water and I question anyone still defending the honor of this guy, even if one agrees the right decision was made in the trial.

Gravitating towards the petty personal shit when you have nothing to contribute. Trying to pick up Garamet's mantle? You are no garamet.

No. You do not have to defend a single molecule of that man's being to acknowledge the fact that there was not enough evidence to arrest him, let alone convict. You don't like him. I don't like him. Likeability is not a prerequisite of justifiable self-defense. Not for the first time, I wonder if some of you fail to comprehend that it's not a fucking popularity contest. You're not voting in some fucktarded reality TV show.

And yet, Martin not only had his own previous teenage exploits brought in to enforce the belief that he was the aggressor, but, also the criminal activities of other black men who happened to have the same name.

So, no, you don't get to bitch about Zimmerman's behavior being brought into the argument.

Not by me, it wasn't.

I'll decide what I get to do.

You too, dicknuts. Make a damn argument.

Not a personal attack. Jenee fancies herself a progressive and you a contrarian rugged individualist. There's not a lotta overlap in those idealogies and most people don't date that far outta their political circles.

It is an increasingly-pervasive sickness of modern human society that people are growing up believing it is perfectly reasonable to expect everything and everyone to repeat your own opinions back to you verbatim. Adults can disagree without denying each others' humanity.

Sorry, I don't view disagreements about which people deserve rights to be the same category of disagreement as whether pineape belongs on pizza

I don't need lockstep but I'd rather risk reproduction with a guy that won't disown our potential kid for being queer in 15 years if I keel over.

A distinction to be made either in the legal or casual sense is that if you follow someone with no ill intent and without going to unusual lengths, that probably should not be considered stalking. Taking Zimmerman at his word on the reason why he was following Martin, he suspected Martin had been up to no good and wanted to ask him questions. He wasn't apparently looking to hurt, harass, terrify etc. So given that it was a single incident and the actual lengths of the following were not particularly extreme, I don't think it qualified as "stalking."

Now we can certainly doubt whether those original intentions changed, if Zimmerman threw the first punch, etc. I suppose we can read into Zimmerman's character and suspect that he had a deeper thing going on, not unlike the Ahmad Arbery case.

The main difference between the two AFAIK is that there is cell phone video that shows exactly what the suspects in the Arbery case were up to, plus there is at least some documented history of some of the people involved in that of being racially suspect.

Well it depends on what you think is Martin's position. If you were walking around minding your own business, and a stranger was following you for no apparent reason, I trust you would not go into attack mode as Zimmerman claimed Martin did. But what if Martin acted like his girlfriend claimed and was minding his own business when Zimmerman caught up to him? It might not have been possible to avoid some form of a physical confrontation from Martin's perspective, and possibly even a verbal one.

To which of us do you imagine this applies?

Was his girlfriend not discredited for lying and making shit up? Was the initial account not that he communicated to her somehow that he had evaded Zimmerman? If I'm wrong, then I'm wrong, but my understanding was that Martin left Zimmerman's pudgy ass in the dust, and then chose to go back and confront him.

Is *that* what your argument is based on? I’ve walked away from plenty of fights just to turn around and go back because I … re-evaluated/thought of something/ whatever. That’s not an indication that Martin intended to harm.

From what I'm reading on Google, there were things that she admitted to lying about various things, none of which were material to what happened that night.

https://www.cnn.com/2013/06/26/justice/zimmerman-trial/index.html

A reasonable person could of course conclude based on these immaterial lies that she lied about everything material, lied about some of the material things, or that these lies are irrelevant to her testimony.

The understanding that Martin evaded Zimmerman and returned to confront him is Zimmerman's account, which again, could be accurate, but could also be a shifting narrative to make him look better.

But it does completely undermine the argument that Martin had no choice but to "defend" himself with physical violence. If you had a chance to walk a way and you didn't, worse yet if you had already escaped to safety and chose to go back and initiate a confrontation, that's on you.

Agreed. But that leaves us with physical evidence, which also supports Zimmerman's account.

At this point, it’s probably that Martin did not know Zimmerman had a gun. So, it would have just been two guys having an argument. We don’t know. And that’s why I’m not so quick to believe Zimmerman. Because he left no witnesses.

Have you been in the evidence locker? Do you know something we don’t? What physical evidence are you talking about? If you’re referring to Zimmerman’s injuries, then that is only evidence that Martin, at some point, got the upper hand.

The question is when.

Doesn't matter. Either the shorter, fatter one was able to chase down the younger, more athletic one, or they both chose to have a confrontation and it comes down to who threw the first punch.

They are unambiguous evidence of a mortal threat.

No, the question is who threw the first punch. We don't get to know that, but what we do get is the imperfect, incomplete evidence available. One guy had evidence of a beating, one guy had evidence of having delivered a beating. We have to go with the conclusion this indicates, rather than what we would prefer to believe.

As the only person who can confirm or deny Zimmerman’s version of events is dead, then the only thing we have is an unarmed dead body and smoking gun.

And the live body. And the phone records. The whole pile of shit that does not depend on how anybody feels.

Not everyone has training in hand to hand combat. In fact, most people do not. prior to the military, I hadn’t had any hand to hand training. But, I had been in fights. I have managed to land a few blows. And mostly, I wasn’t even trying.

A 17 year old knew he was being followed. He was alone. It was dark. If I were in that situation, I’d be fighting for my life. I can’t imagine any person just casually standing by waiting for someone to pull a gun.

Hey, maybe Martin knew there’d been a rash of crimes in that neighborhood. Maybe he thought Zimmerman was the criminal and that’s why he was attempting to subdue him?

No. Certainly not a short, overweight crybaby constantly calling the police - or the teacher or his mommy because something was happening that he didn’t like.